Now 120 years after it made its debut down the road in Leeds, Elgar’s early oratorio Caractacus has made it to Huddersfield where it was enthusiastically received and a recording made for issue on a leading classical label.

You could argue that it was a spiritual homecoming for the work. Huddersfield Choral Society is probably the most renowned survivor of the large 19th century choirs that created a demand for such hefty oratorios.

It might well be that if Elgar had not gone on to greater things, Caractacus – like most late Victorian repertory of its sort – would be forgotten today. But it probably deserves occasional revival and, under conductor Martyn Brabbins, the Huddersfield Choral, the Orchestra of Opera North and a very good assemblage of soloists made an excellent case for the work.

The choir – who had been directed by Gregory Batsleer – certainly displayed full-blooded commitment to this tale of the early British chieftain who defied the might of Rome.

Elgar displays the expertise in orchestration that is his hallmark and there is some highly varied writing for choir and soloists, but as a work Caractacus has a lukewarm reputation, mostly because of the second rate libretto by an amateur author of Elgar’s acquaintance.

The words, by one H A Acworth serve their purpose, however (in fact, they are better than I had been led to expect) and perhaps deserved greater clarity, especially in the first two scenes, with their druidical invocations and warnings of disaster.

No doubt the conductor and performers were following Elgar’s dynamics and other markings to the letter, but I found these opening scenes less atmospheric and mysterious than might have been expected. It was after the interval that the work and the performance caught fire.

There is a very Elgarian woodland scene and a truly rapturous love duet, sung passionately by the soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn as Eigen and, in the role of Orbin, the tenor Elgan Thomas (he was a late substitute, but sang excellently and probably with the greatest clarity).

As King Caractacus, Roland Wood displayed tragic nobility throughout, and – along with the chorus - unleashed a lot of power in his lament for fallen warriors. The action switches to Rome where Caractacus – on trial for his life - delivers what is actually a textbook argument against imperialism (“We lived in peace, was that crime to thee/That thy fierce eagle stoop’d upon our nest?”), which might seem retrospectively subversive, in that Britain at the time was the greatest imperial power on earth.

Fortunately, the Roman emperor defies the mob and proves generous to the ancient Britons and the work concludes with its most controversial element, a hymn to the glories of the British Empire that was to come.

We are supposed to find this sort of sentiment shocking today, so perhaps I shouldn’t admit that I found the final chorus – superbly sung and played – rather uplifting. I think most of the audience did too and we must all do due penance. But the fact is that, years before Land of Hope and Glory, Elgar did this kind of patriotic material so very well.

So Caractacus has had a worthy revival by the choir best equipped to do it justice and the recording ought to be worth seeking out when it appears.